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<\/p>\n\u201cI hadn\u2019t experienced that before,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cIn the past, if somebody was laying on a sidewalk, almost always a citizen or somebody would turn that person over, put them in a recovery position, and call for help.\u201d <\/p>\n
\t<\/p>\n
He said he needs another six months to complete his work as a provincial adviser on how to improve life for people in impoverished neighbourhood. <\/p>\n
Campbell, who\u2019s also the former chief coroner of B.C., said he thought he\u2019d finish gathering information from people and organization in the first two months into the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it became rapidly clear that the numbers of organizations and groups and government organizations involved in the Downtown Eastside were way more than I had expected from my previous life,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
The number of service groups in the Downtown Eastside has grown \u201cexponentially,\u201d but the problems of severe mental illness, addiction and inadequate housing are ever-present. <\/p>\n
Campbell said the problem of brain damage suffered by addicts wasn\u2019t something he had seen before fentanyl and other mixed chemical drugs were introduced into the illicit supply. <\/p>\n
He said there\u2019s a lot funding allocated to various support groups in the neighbourhood and he hopes that his report will spur \u201cconcrete\u201d action on improving an area that has been rife with problems for decades. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been looking at the organizations, both government and non-profits, and at the street level, there\u2019s an amazing co-ordination that goes on,\u201d he said. \u201cBut there\u2019s a certain amount of fragmentation that goes on. There\u2019s a lot of organizations and government that are overlapping.\u201d <\/p>\n
He said some single-room occupancy buildings are in such a poor state that they \u201cshould not be lived in,\u201d and added that none of those residential buildings are safe for women, especially Indigenous women. <\/p>\n
The neighbourhood has \u201cchanged dramatically\u201d since he was mayor, Campbell said, but the problems around housing, addiction and mental illness are similar to what is happening in communities across the country. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Downtown Eastside is Canada. The Downtown Eastside is in everybody\u2019s community,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat do we do? How do we help these people? How do we house them?\u201d <\/p>\n
Campbell said he hopes any report to the government coming out of his advisory work will spur \u201cconcrete action\u201d rather than just be another report that\u2019s \u201cjust going to sit on a shelf.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI certainly want to see some action on these things we\u2019re talking about, both the accountability in the Downtown Eastside, the coming together of governments, and the coming (together) of ministries to work toward making things different,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 31, 2026<\/p>\n
Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI hadn\u2019t experienced that before,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cIn the past, if somebody was laying on a sidewalk, almost…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[879,49,48,2467,2461,2468,2460,2462,2463,44,2464,2465,2466,82,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-573960","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vancouver","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-central-vancouver-island","12":"tag-nanaimo","13":"tag-nanaimo-breaking-news","14":"tag-nanaimo-news","15":"tag-nanaimo-news-now","16":"tag-nanaimonewsnow","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-oceanside","19":"tag-parksville","20":"tag-qualicum","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-vancouver"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}